1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print relay system configured to receive a print job from a print server, a method for controlling the print relay system, and a storage medium therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional technique, a client transmits a print instruction to a server and the server that has received the print instruction converts a content to be printed into print data. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-216367 discusses a system in which a client downloads web content data to be printed and a print format setting screen from a print server and the client transmits print data to an image forming apparatus to print the print data thereon.
As described above, in a conventional system, a server provides a service to a client. In a cloud computing system, which has recently attracted much attention, a server provides a service to a client. In cloud computing, data conversion and data processing are executed as distributed processing with using a large number of computing resources, as characteristic thereto, to process a plurality of requests from a large number of clients at the same time. Recently, very many vendors that provide various types of services have been established and have been providing web services on a cloud computing environment that implements the cloud computing described above.
In particular, Google (registered trademark) is one of the most active vendors. Google (registered trademark) has established very many large-scale data centers. Further, Google (registered trademark) has proposed a service to be provided in association with a device and has developed a method for data communication between a device and a service in a positive manner. For example, Google (registered trademark) has developed a data communication method for providing a service in association with an image forming apparatus. Furthermore, Google (registered trademark) has publicized an interface for implementing data communication between an image forming apparatus and the cloud computing environment provided by Google (registered trademark). If a user desires to utilize the service, the user is required to register information about an image forming apparatus to the cloud computing environment, i.e., a service environment that provides the service. The information about the image forming apparatus can be completely registered to the service environment by storing the information about the image forming apparatus in the environment of the service provider.